While Google Maps has proven to be the best real-time traffic tracking navigation tool on my Android device, last week’s Android customization using Zooper Widget has been a priceless addition to the experience. I hope it has helped you speed up your usage of Maps as well.

If you are like me, you’ve been getting in some travel this summer. While on the road, many of us go a little snap happy with our cameras, and then have dozens, hundreds or more images to sort through when we get home. While I am leaving you to sort your own photos for today, I would like to show you how to force Google Photos to create one of those cool Stories that sometimes pop up on their own.

Before we begin

Manually create a Google Photos Story

As mentioned, Google Photos is pretty clever, and often pumps out a Story from your uploaded photos from a trip. However, you may have taken a photo or two that just don’t belong in the Story, or you have another set of photos altogether that you would like to turn into these shareable short clips. This is where the new Google Photos app on Android comes in handy.

Now, we’ve discussed before that Google Photos can create several nifty types of photo and video presentations through the new Assistant section of the app. Albums, Movies, Stories, Animations and Collages are all ready to be created either automatically through what was once called Autoawesome, or you can now make them happen on command. Let’s build a Story.

Head into the Google Photos app, it will just be called Photos in your app drawer.

Start by heading into the left hand menu and choosing Assistant.

Once in Assistant, you can view all of the auto generated items, be sure to save the ones that you like, and, who knows, it may have already created the Story you were hoping for.

If your desired Story does not exist, head into almost any section of the app and tap the “+” button in the top right corner.

In the list of items that you can create, tap Story.

You will now need to select photos and videos, run through your list and grab all that you want included in this Story.

When ready, tap the Create button in the top right.

That is really all there is to it. If the photos relate and are geo-tagged, Google Photos is smart enough to attach a title and fill in a few other blanks for you. Run through the Story to add some descriptions and fine tune image placement, then go ahead and share with the world.

What’s next

You may not know this, but you just went through the exact same basic steps required to create any of the fancy image tools in the new Google Photos. Each has their own settings and abilities on the other end, but simply tap new and select your photos to get started, Google Photos will do all the heavy lifting.

Next Week

I hope this little Android customization project helps you get some awesome image and video presentations out of Google Photos this summer. Next week we want to get back to manipulating how Android actually operates on your device, we’ll take a quick look at Google Now, or at least at the swipe up gesture and what you might like to use it for instead.

Do you use Google Photos as your image storage solution?